


You lost count around fifty.

by kiiouex



Series: monotony [2]
Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Gore, Lots of bones, M/M, Manipulation, POV Second Person, Psychological Horror, Rape/Non-con Elements, Reincarnation, Starvation, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:36:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know the depths of the loathing he owes you. </p><p>Or, every time Wilson dies, Maxwell brings him back to start their game over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You lost count around fifty.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been kicking this around for months, and I finally ripped out a bunch of things I didn't like and polished it, so I'm so pleased to be getting it out. It's a direct sequel/B-side to 'It takes at least thirty days' from Maxwell's PoV. 
> 
> [telekinesiskid](archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) is kicking me right at this very second but she also read this twice when I made huge changes and helped out a lot so thanks to her for beta'ing and telling me to add more gross details.

“ _Say, pal. You don’t look so good._ ”

He glares up at you with absolute hatred as you grin. You’d thought you’d get tired of mocking him in person, but you just can’t; seeing him whole, seeing all his teeth in his head and the whites of his eyes clear, it’s always exciting to you. A fresh new Wilson; a world of possibilities. He stands, starts for you with knuckles that aren’t cracked or bloodied, and you disappear. The few times you stayed to see what he’d do to you proved disappointing; even if he has the strength to hurt you, before the world’s broken him down, he really lacks the proper _motivation_.   

His first actions are always the same, simple things. You tend to drop him down somewhere with easy food to start with, carrots he can pull from the ground and berries from any plants that are lush. He gathers grass, sticks and flint with an unknowingly rigid routine. He doesn’t waste time, he’s quick to gather resources and heat, making preparations to survive the night or the cold or the rain, whatever your world is throwing at him. Always industrious, always laying out plans for what he needs and working to achieve it. Like he thinks there’s such a thing as escape, even if he could live long enough to reach it. 

There's something so inherently hopeful to his early actions that it feels pointless to crush him. Sometime you come for him, but it's never fun, not while he's still so healthy and hardy and prepared. He’ll only spit and struggle and fight. He needs to be worn down more to look at you the way you like, with the proper desperation-edged loathing.

 

Charlie comes with the night, and normally her noise is enough of a warning for him to make a fire. You linger with her sometimes, talk to her, whisper gentle memories of the past and wonder if she has any idea what you're saying at all. You stroke her and watch him, huddled pathetically by a campfire, shovelling twigs onto sputtering flames while the shadows do no more than nip at his ankles. He still jumps like they’re manifest and dragging him back, like he hasn’t seen the shadows alive a dozen times.

Wilson doesn’t often disappoint you by slipping off into the night. It’s a waste of both your time; he’s just going to have to gather food and twigs anew the next day.

 

Sometimes he sets up farms, sometimes he looks like he might actually _settle_ and you're always curious if he's intending to stay. Not that you give him the chance to find out, not between hounds and winter and every other nightmare you like to send along.

You think he actually would have settled, once. Twenty farms, three crockpots, and he had found something none of his other incarnations had: a weird, complacent happiness. You found it deeply unsettling, and you brought the darkness down on him with no warning. When he woke, it was on an island across the ocean, and you’ve been careful to ensure he’s never looked so happy again.

 

He’s too dumb to see the danger in most of the world. Sometimes he'll see bones of past incarnations, all the scraps left from his past failings, and actually understand not to touch what they touched. And sometimes he’ll look at the swamp, miss all the white markers jutting up from the ooze, and wander in to become a warning. Sometimes he'll actually try to survive in the worst of places, over his old bones as if just seeing if he can. He'll get filthy, wet and dirty, he'll sit in the mud and suffer and insanity will reach him faster than you can.

 

He doesn't respect your creatures. You spent good time on them and he kills them so inelegantly, inexpertly, worthless amateur jabs with his spear like he thinks he’s worthy of hunting your creations. Once you set him down right next to a tallbird nest, let it gore him before he knew where he was, and you felt so pleased to finally let the birds get their revenge. You put him next to the nest again, by a spider's nest, by a hound mound, in the middle of the swamp. He was half-deep in the mud before he started to stand, and the tentacles grabbed him before he could scream. You didn't disappear that time, just stood there and delivered your stock greeting, raising your voice over the sound of his absolute agony. The screaming and splattering and vile, messy death you got to witness was your reward for tolerating him so long.

It was about then that you started to think he looked good in pieces.

 

You didn’t start so cruel. It’s a memory that you only reach for on occasion; how humane you use to be, and how human he used to seem. You’d give him a good, sporting chance, and he’d do his very best, a person trying to meet his needs and cope and build and survive. The first time he died was to spiders and you actually felt bad watching them rip up his corpse. You felt worse when you brought him back to start over again.

But you’ve just seen him fail so very many times.

 

One winter the chill never let up and he spent a whole week watching his toes drop off. He got so hungry and bitter and _angry_ that he set the whole forest on fire. He must have thought ‘why not?’ - he’d get the frost off his fingers and he’d get to ruin your nice world and then he would get to die and you would be left with the ashes.

Your treeguards rose up, but they caught alight as he dodged around them, and he laughed and he laughed and he was warm, for a while. But everything turned to soot and slush, and he ran out of things to burn. He froze, grinning like he had won.

You let the next one wake up on the scorched earth and pick up pinecones. He didn't last long with no wood for fuel, and you smiled because he will always, always lose.

 

He finds his old bones all the time and he doesn't know. It always amuses you, watching him pick through his own possessions, his own bodies. Your creatures work fast to clean them and he has no idea that the backpacks and axes are his own work, that the gold and the rocks are his hard-won spoils. You saw him try the meat once, when he was desperate. He grimaced, but he didn’t spit it out.

He worked it out once too. He checked the shape of a skull, of all the skulls, and spent a full day trying to come to terms with it. He made a graveyard, buried them all even though the work drained his energy, took up the whole day and left him too weak to forage by the end. He got tired of writing his own name on the headstones, covered the markers with whatever could think of, the names of strangers, shopping lists. Twenty filled graves, and one empty one for him to lie down into.

He left a sign, but you destroyed it.

His next incarnation dug up all the graves.

 

Wilson was almost worthy of your respect, that resourceful little scientist with all his limbs and organs in place. You’re not actually sure when you stopped seeing Wilson. The man on your island is so rarely whole, he’s less a person than a sack of parts to be pulled open and scattered around. He’s succulent meat over bones that will last a thousand times longer than he did, and you do not think he will ever be more again.

 

You send hounds along if he ever starts moving too slowly, and after so many days with no respite, how can he help it? His early industry is so keenly surmounted by hunger and desolation, and insanity is more than shadows, it is inevitability. When he starts to realise that your lands can offer no relief for him, he looks for his own.

You’d rather your hounds take him than let him take himself. Even though there’s nothing in your world you’d describe as quick or painless, you do not want him to have any measure of _control_ , not even over his own life. You call packs to gorge on him as he approaches the ocean’s edge, you conjure fiends when he ties a noose, and you summon your titans if he ever thinks his death can be as peaceful as just lying down and freezing.

When he sees your creations come for him, you can always tell by his face that he understands. His life is yours. He struggles, grabs for whatever tools he can reach, claws at his own throat to try and deliver his own release. He’s succeeded, a couple of times. But most times your monsters make his death long and bloody, a lesson he always fails to learn.

 

He will glare at you with his mundane hate when you go to greet him the next morning, and you have seen him so desperate so many times that you just grin back. He doesn't know the depths of the loathing he owes you. There are so many things he doesn’t know that he really ought to. He thinks he's a scientist but he's an ant, a worm, pathetic before you the way he thrashes in the dirt. But you bid him a good morning, and you leave him to try again, gather his food and his flint and march off to a new, stale death.

 

You consider ending the game almost every time you start it. You could just kill him and keep him dead and it would be easier than hauling him back every time, curating your world and centring your everything on watching him. But then how would you pass the time? The only thing worse than playing this game with him forever would be facing an empty board alone.

 

It would be far easier if he could kill you. Sometimes you almost want him to, to end you and take the throne and finally let you move on. But you can't make it easy for him, you don't want him to stumble into it, and he's so stupid so often, he falls into the same traps over and over again and he deserves every single death. You’ve got a little too much pride to just show up and hand him a knife. You’re waiting for him to earn it.

 

You decide to give him a proper chance – the first real, legitimate shot he’s had since the game began. An autumn with a generous harvest, and he gathers his materials while you hold the hounds back. When he stays out for a second too long at night, you keep Charlie at bay for the moment it takes him to make a torch. His old bones are warnings that he actually heeds, his farms are just enough to get him through winter before he moves on, and he doesn’t lose so much as a finger in a stupid fight with a spider. You’re actually excited when he starts gathering the Things. It feels like the end is finally in sight and oh do you need the respite.   

You shadow him day and night and watch his progress unfold, watch his confidence grow in his bulky wooden armour - and he often makes armour, but he's remembering to wear it all the time now. He makes friends with pigs, feeds them meat, sends them to their deaths on his behalf and you're eager and proud and delighted by it all. He's doing so well. You'd let this Wilson kill you. This Wilson is the only worthy one you've ever seen.

And then the moon turns full, his followers devour him, and you howl because he _fucked it up_ , why didn't he attack them while they were changing, why didn't he just _run_ , what was he trying to do, appeal to them? Did he think they were friends, did he think they liked him for anything more than the food he gave them? It's the stupidest, stupidest thing and it makes you so angry you bring him back at night and let the pigs tear him up again, you bring him back and you get your hands on him yourself.

You've wanted to do this for so long. You've been restraining yourself from some notion of fairness, but what's the point in being fair to someone like him? He deserves it. He doesn't know what's going on but you don't care, you get your hands around his throat and choke him, get him dizzy and weak and gasping, rip his clothes off and finally get something out of the stupid fucking scientist.

You leave his body where it is, and winter takes it.

 

He's back in the next morning and he does badly. You watch with narrowed eyes as he fumbles through the early stages of the game, picking at plants and trying to find food. Trying to bait the rabbits and hoping he won't starve. He has never starved. You’ve never let him.

He finds the body, and he throws up, and oh, it makes you grin to see it. After all the pain he's caused you, all the frustration from watching, it's so good to let _him_ see the consequences of all his failure.

 

You come to him by his fire that night, and he shies back, afraid of you, and it is utterly gratifying. He's resistant to the truth, but he knows it, knows in his gut what you’ve done to him. What you did, and can do again. He wants to know how many times you've been the one to finish him off.

Only once, so far. Or innumerable hundreds, depends how he's counting. You tell him ‘a few’ as a compromise and he's scared, he looks perfectly deliciously afraid of you and fuck it, he's going to die in a day anyway, there's no point to him. You step in, choke him, crush him, wring the life out of him while he dies under your fingers and it feels _so good_.

You think you’ll do him a favour, give him a choice. See if he wants to find his body so he can throw up again next loop, or if he wants to live in ignorance.

He says he wants to _remember_.

You can’t help but laugh. Why would he want to remember? You barely want to remember, and you _know_ what he’s been through where he just has the barest, slightest gleam of what’s happened to him. He’ll go mad, knowing his own mortality, getting to feel the life leave him so many times, he’ll go mad with failure and repetition and the total futility of it all.

But he might start making more interesting mistakes.

Your fingers settle back around his throat, and you smile at his fury, one tiny drop of his debt, and you squeeze until he stops looking at you, toss the body back into the shadows for the creatures to feast on.

 

And when you bring him back the next day, he remembers. He looks around, waiting for you to come and taunt him, but you don’t. You’re watching, of course, and his death is still fresh in his head as he sets off across the fields. It’s still winter. His odds still aren’t great. When he dies this time, his mistakes are going to stay with him, haunt him, his own failings sure to torture him better than he ever could have.

 

You should have done this a long time ago.


End file.
